


Let It Drown

by local_doom_void



Series: Triumph [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: It has to be dead.An alternative graveyard scene.
Series: Triumph [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734892
Comments: 13
Kudos: 91





	Let It Drown

**Author's Note:**

> So, quarantine has:
> 
> * Wrecked my work, school, and exercise schedules  
> * Somehow caused me to eat better  
> * Distracted me with cleaning my apartment, because I went from never being home to being constantly home and having to deal with the messes.
> 
> My usual seasonal depressive episode has lasted longer than usual, too. But I'm slowly emerging, like a moth, and I'm trying to finish and post all the oneshots I wrote/started over the winter. Hope you enjoy!

It has to be dead.

This is all that Harry can think as he stares at the vast cauldron, lit dimly from beneath by an eerie green fire, and listens to the roil and bubble of liquid within. The entire graveyard smells of smoke and copper, and though Harry tries not to think too hard on why it smells so very coppery, a part of him has already come to a conclusion. The deep, dark, wet looking stains across the cauldron, visible only through the shimmer of the lights and altered whenever the boiling liquid inside bursts up and sloshes over the edges, must be responsible.

He wishes somebody would come. Anyone – even a muggle policeman, just to let Harry know that he isn’t going totally insane and that he hasn’t been transported to some sort of nightmare of an alternate universe. In a world where a muggle policeman could wander into this scene – a boy tied to a gravestone, a pitiful adult man with a severed hand sobbing on the ground, a massive cauldron lit by a green fire – then Harry would not need to worry. Perhaps it’s a remnant of growing up muggle, but things such as this do not happen. There are no ugly infant-like creatures in giant cauldrons possibly threatening to turn into Dark Lords, because in a world where a muggle policeman could wander in and say “Oi, what’s all this then?” it would all fall apart for lack of belonging.

Nobody comes.

Rather, nobody new comes. Nobody who Harry wants to come, comes. Instead the cauldron gives off a horrendous sucking sound, as if all the water – he has to imagine it is water – had been drained off by a vacuum. There’s the sound of splashing. There’s silence as the greenish fire goes out.

Nothing happens.

Then a hand fastens on the edge of the cauldron from inside. It is bigger than the hands of the baby-thing that went inside, but just as pale. Another hand joins it. Then there are arms – a head, shoulders, an entire upper body, facing away from Harry and all covered up with a strange texture – almost scaled – that glimmers under the faint moonlight striking down through the clouds whenever it can.

Not-Voldemort – because it’s _not_ Voldemort and it can’t _be_ Voldemort – doesn’t have hair. There are probably scales all over his – skin? Harry thinks he sees darker remnants of fluid, left over from the dark liquid that must have been in the cauldron, but he still can’t tell what color it is. He’d rather not know.

The man – whoever he is, certainly not Voldemort – puts a hand to his face. Sucks in a rattling breath and lets it out with a sigh, before taking in another. His back rises and falls and his shoulders tremble, and only then, after a long moment of nothing but breathing, does he straighten up.

 _“Bastard,”_ Harry hears Voldemort – the real Voldemort, oh Merlin please no – hiss under his breath. “Robe me,” he continues, voice cold and high, and Pettigrew scrambles miserably to throw a pair of robes over the tall man’s shoulders before holding out Voldemort’s pale yew wand. The Dark Lord does something to the fronts of the robes – buttons them? – and takes his wand. He casts a wordless spell on Pettigrew that makes the man shriek, and then another that makes him crumple to the ground.

Harry realises that he is shaking.

He doesn’t –

He doesn’t know what to _do_.

His wrists are tied too tightly to the cold stone behind him. He can barely move his shoulders. The gag in his mouth is rough but firm, and he can’t do much more than mumble indistinctly through it. He has nothing in his hands. He isn’t really sure where his wand is. His right sleeve is torn up and the cut across his arm is stinging and aching, and there’s still blood slipping down to his wrist, leaking beneath the bonds and gathering on his palm.

Think, he tries to tell himself. _Think_. Something, something, something – ! There must be _something!_

But he can’t move, or speak, and that’s _Voldemort_.

The Dark Lord is out of the coffin now. He’s walking around on real legs, even if they are hidden by robes that go down to his ankles and drag ever so slightly across the grass. He’s looking around, and then –

Then he looks at Harry.

His scar does not explode in pain. (It hasn’t done that since first year, really.) Instead Harry gets a full and unobstructed view of the Dark Lord’s scaled face. His cheekbones are like knives taken to his skull. His nose is – flat, nonexistant? Unlike a human’s nose. His almond eyes are bright, bright red, and somehow Harry can tell their redness even in the gloom. It is as if they glow themselves – as if they project themselves outwards to impose their color on the world.

He smiles. It is cruel, and his teeth look curvier than a human’s teeth should.

“Hello, Harry,” says the man who killed his parents, and Harry glares as best he can despite the fact that he has no wand and cannot move and does not know what to _do_. He glares, because Voldemort killed his parents, and Harry places every sin committed by the Dursleys directly at this monster’s feet.

But Voldemort doesn’t even respond to this glare. Instead he taps his pale wand against the equally pale skin of his palm. He wanders closer to Harry, footsteps so soft that if he hadn’t seen the man take those steps, Harry would never have believed he moved. His wand lifts. Harry struggles with himself over whether or not to move, torn between pride and dignity and needing to _do_ something.

The tip of it taps against Harry’s forehead, right at the thickest portion of his lightning-bolt scar.

“I do wonder,” Voldemort says nonsensically.

You wonder what?! Harry tries to scream. But there is no coherent word to escape him, and Voldemort only smiles cruelly down at him again.

 _“Be silent,”_ he hisses, and taps the wand to Harry’s throat. Immediately it is as if everything is empty – as if he has no tongue at all in his mouth. Harry panics for a moment until he realises he can still touch it to the gag and taste the disgusting fabric. But there is nothing else – nothing else at all. No matter how much he tries, no sound comes from him but the rush of labored breathing.

“Ah, lovely,” Voldemort says, once Harry has hyperventilated for a short time. “That answers that, then.”

There follows perhaps the most excruciating ten or fifteen minutes of Harry Potter’s life to date.

The Dark Lord Voldemort paces back and forth in front of Harry. He points his wand at Harry over and over, at different angles, until Harry has given up on worrying every time this happens. But he can’t speak, and Voldemort won’t stop, and won’t even explain what he’s doing. Harry can’t imagine that anything about this is good, and so despite his earlier resolution to try and keep his composure, Harry –

Struggles, physically. When still Voldemort paces, when still he points his wand without doing anything, Harry begins to thrash in his bonds. His best bet right now is trying to loosen them somehow. He has no idea what to do after that. But he has to do something, doesn’t he?

_Doesn’t he?_

“Destino,” Voldemort murmurs suddenly. Harry doesn’t recognise the spell, but he recognises that he can’t dodge the pinkish-white burst of light coming for him, and in the middle of all his struggles and panic he very suddenly and acutely _does not want to die_.

It hits him. It’s faintly warm on his collarbone.

Nothing happens at all that he can see.

Harry stops moving, mostly out of pure exhaustion and shock. Dully he stares down at himself, wondering what is going on. What Voldemort is playing at.

“Good,” Voldemort breathes, and returns to Harry from where he stood just by and beyond the cauldron. With one hand he reaches out – catches Harry’s chin and tilts it up before waving his wand. The gag yanks itself from Harry’s mouth before he can flinch. He tries to bite the scaled fingers holding his chin still, but they only tighten their hold.

“Now, now,” Voldemort says – as if he’s trying to be chiding. “That’s rude.”

Harry stares at him and bares his teeth. He figures it’s the next best thing, if he cannot speak.

Voldemort only smirks at him. He drops Harry’s head and turns, wandering back to stand by the cauldron once more.

“I shall give you a moment,” he says, and pauses. His hands he places behind his back, wand and all, and looks for all the world like he’s admiring the moon in the sky. Harry stares – tries his best to make a rude gesture. He thinks he’s managed to force his fingers into the correct shape, but he doesn’t know if Voldemort has even noticed.

The man looks back down.

“I must say, Harry, that it has been… altogether unpleasant. I shan’t miss you.”

What? Harry tries to scream. What are you talking about, what are you _doing?_

But the pale wand is slashing through the air, until it comes to rest aimed for his chest.

“ _Avada Kedavra_ ,” Voldemort says – and inexplicably ducks towards the cauldron. But Harry can’t see any more than that, because it’s so very green, and he knows – he remembers that spider in DADA that curled up immediately and died, just lay right down and stopped. He’s not stopped, he’s moving and thrashing and utterly uncaring of anything at all beyond the need to get _out of the way_ –

Something slaps him in the chest, hard, and he can breathe again. The anxiety all drops away, and so do the bonds holding him helpless and immobile. He feels utterly carefree, his entire body suspended, as if he were flying on his Firebolt. The wind whips in his hair and all his troubles drop from him, because magic gave him this, and magic is wonderful.

He falls, carefree, and does not realise he’s left his body far behind him.

  


* * *

  


After a long moment of nothing at all untoward happening, Voldemort carefully looks over the rim of the resurrection cauldron. Harry Potter’s body hangs loose and limp in its bonds, still and silent. Not even a finger so much as twitches.

Voldemort wanders over to it. He casts about eight different diagnostic charms at it and finds that everything has stopped, in a classic Avada death. Just the way it ought to be.

It really must have been the mother all along, Voldemort thinks with self-satisfied glee as he cuts down Harry Potter’s corpse and lays it across the ground. But whatever she did back then, in 1981, she was not here to do it again, and Harry Potter fell to Lord Voldemort, just as any human would.

He smiles to himself.

What a lovely day this has been.

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this is a oneshot, and will not have any continuation.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [what would i give](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26177548) by [Atlanta_Black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black)
  * [hope where have you gone?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102941) by [Atlanta_Black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black)




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